Outrage as darts fan dresses up in blackface as MP Diane Abbott and bookies defends it
Star Sports Bookmakers has become embroiled in a Twitter storm after it defended posting a tweet which showed a man blacked-up to mimic the Labour MP - which it said was an early contender for best fancy dress
This picture was shared in a tweet by Star Sports Bookmakers (Image: @StarSports_Bet/Twitter
A Darts fan has sparked fury after dressing up in blackface as MP Diane Abbott at the World Championships in Alexandra Palace.

The arrows spectator is at the centre of a raging Twitter storm after a bookmakers shared a picture of his fancy dress during last night's first round matches.

The photograph shows the man, who is unnamed, with a blacked-up face and hands while wearing a black wig, glasses and red jacket complete with Labour rosette.

He is also seen holding a sign which reads 190 - 10 more than the maximum 180 score on a throw - which may be seen as a possible jibe at Ms Abbott.

While outlining Labour's plan to put 10,000 more police officers on the street, Ms Abbott said the policy would cost £300,000, then £80 million, then around £800 million over four years.

The picture emerged when it was shared on Twitter by independent bookmakers Star Sports Bookmakers, who described it as an "early contender" for best fancy dress in the competition, which started on Thursday.

The company has defended its post and told a Labour colleague of Ms Abbott to 'stop taking things so seriously' when she complained it was prejudiced.

The caption alongside the image reads: "An early contender for best fancy dress costume at the #PDC #WorldDartsChampionships tonight at #AllyPally."

Meanwhile, in the year 2017, it is usually poorly educated souls or Year 4 pupils that tend to find this hilarious. But at least you got some retweets.

Among those to slam the bookmakers was Ms Abbott's Labour colleague Stella Creasy.

She tweeted: "Wow @ StarSports_Bet - guess it says what you really think of your customers that you promote this..hoping Yourallypally expect better about those using their beautiful venue …as bookies or punters… 21stcenturycalling."

But the firm hit back at the Labour politician to "stop taking things so seriously" as it defended the picture.

Star Sports Bookmakers tweeted: "This wasn’t some guerrilla marketing stunt Stella; one of our team attended on a social night out.

"We thought it was a very impressive attempt at fancy dress and merely shared it with our followers. Please stop taking things so seriously."

Ms Creasy later tweeted the company should "go off to the 19th century" after one user told her to "have a day off".

Mirror Online has approached the company, based in Hove, Sussex, for comment.

But the firm appeared unapologetic when contacted by the Independent and claimed nothing it had previously posted has had such a "positive response" on social media.

A spokesperson told the website: "We were at Cheltenham yesterday and we were also at the darts and there were people taking pictures with guys in Batman outfits and Superman outfits, and also this guy in a Diane Abbott outfit.

“We tweeted it and it has had an unprecedented response in terms of retweets and likes.

“Ultimately you’re not going to please everybody all the time - we have never had anything on our social media that has had such a positive response.”

Outrage as darts fan dresses up in blackface as MP Diane Abbott and bookies defends it
Star Sports Bookmakers has become embroiled in a Twitter storm after it defended posting a tweet which showed a man blacked-up to mimic the Labour MP - which it said was an early contender for best fancy dress
This picture was shared in a tweet by Star Sports Bookmakers (Image: @StarSports_Bet/Twitter
A Darts fan has sparked fury after dressing up in blackface as MP Diane Abbott at the World Championships in Alexandra Palace.

The arrows spectator is at the centre of a raging Twitter storm after a bookmakers shared a picture of his fancy dress during last night's first round matches.

The photograph shows the man, who is unnamed, with a blacked-up face and hands while wearing a black wig, glasses and red jacket complete with Labour rosette.

He is also seen holding a sign which reads 190 - 10 more than the maximum 180 score on a throw - which may be seen as a possible jibe at Ms Abbott.

While outlining Labour's plan to put 10,000 more police officers on the street, Ms Abbott said the policy would cost £300,000, then £80 million, then around £800 million over four years.

The picture emerged when it was shared on Twitter by independent bookmakers Star Sports Bookmakers, who described it as an "early contender" for best fancy dress in the competition, which started on Thursday.

The company has defended its post and told a Labour colleague of Ms Abbott to 'stop taking things so seriously' when she complained it was prejudiced.

The caption alongside the image reads: "An early contender for best fancy dress costume at the #PDC #WorldDartsChampionships tonight at #AllyPally."

Meanwhile, in the year 2017, it is usually poorly educated souls or Year 4 pupils that tend to find this hilarious. But at least you got some retweets.

Among those to slam the bookmakers was Ms Abbott's Labour colleague Stella Creasy.

She tweeted: "Wow @ StarSports_Bet - guess it says what you really think of your customers that you promote this..hoping Yourallypally expect better about those using their beautiful venue …as bookies or punters… 21stcenturycalling."

But the firm hit back at the Labour politician to "stop taking things so seriously" as it defended the picture.

Star Sports Bookmakers tweeted: "This wasn’t some guerrilla marketing stunt Stella; one of our team attended on a social night out.

"We thought it was a very impressive attempt at fancy dress and merely shared it with our followers. Please stop taking things so seriously."

Ms Creasy later tweeted the company should "go off to the 19th century" after one user told her to "have a day off".

Mirror Online has approached the company, based in Hove, Sussex, for comment.

But the firm appeared unapologetic when contacted by the Independent and claimed nothing it had previously posted has had such a "positive response" on social media.

A spokesperson told the website: "We were at Cheltenham yesterday and we were also at the darts and there were people taking pictures with guys in Batman outfits and Superman outfits, and also this guy in a Diane Abbott outfit.

“We tweeted it and it has had an unprecedented response in terms of retweets and likes.

“Ultimately you’re not going to please everybody all the time - we have never had anything on our social media that has had such a positive response.”

Mirror Online has contacted Alexandra Palace for comment.

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A lot of this shite is because the minority moan about it so get heard whereas the majority who see it for what it is don't.
If I tweeted raging about my next door neighbor buying a black pair of shoes or white for that matter, you can guarantee someplace somewhere they'll be some numptys agreeing with me.

Exactly. If he didn't blacken his face then he wouldn't look like her, so the fancy dress wouldn't work. 'Blackface' was a bad thing, but that was in the 19th century, we've kind of moved on since then. The joke was clearly referring to Abbott's inability to count not her skin colour.

She's a political figure of ridicule, just like Boris Johnson and Trump, everyone laughs when the white man gets the piss taken out of them but woe betide anyone mocking a woman and/or person of colour. Ironically she has a history of being a horrible racist herself.

How the fuck can someone who carried out 100 rapes serve less than 9 years in prison? How can the parole board be confident that he will not be a danger to the public? What the fuck is wrong with this country continually giving dangerous people like him a 2nd chance?

How the fuck can someone who carried out 100 rapes serve less than 9 years in prison? How can the parole board be confident that he will not be a danger to the public? What the fuck is wrong with this country continually giving dangerous people like him a 2nd chance?

Some of the crimes that are given suspended sentences nowadays makes you wonder what world these judges are living in. You simply can't do something like that and basically get away with it, well, obviously you can as these morons did, but you shouldn't.

Tesco is facing Britain's largest ever equal pay claim and a possible bill running to £4bn.

Thousands of women who work in Tesco stores could receive back pay totalling £20,000 if the legal challenge demanding parity with men who work in the company's warehouses is successful.

Lawyers say hourly-paid female store staff earn less than men even though the value of the work is comparable.

Tesco said it worked hard to ensure all staff were paid "fairly and equally".

Paula Lee, of Leigh Day solicitors told the BBC it was time for Tesco to tackle the problem of equal pay for work of equal worth.

Her firm has been contacted by more than 1,000 Tesco staff and will this week take the initial legal steps for 100 of them.

The most common rate for women is £8 an hour whereas for men the hourly rate can be as high as £11 an hour, she added.

Cleaners vs Binmen - What is "work of comparable value"?

Since 1984 workers doing jobs that require comparable skills, have similar levels of responsibility and are of comparable worth to the employer, should also be rewarded equally, according to the law.

Thus if you are a cleaner, lugging mops and buckets up and down staircases, you may have a case for being paid the same as co-workers collecting rubbish bins.

It doesn't matter whether the cleaner or the shop floor worker is male or female, they may still have a case to see their pay upped to match colleagues doing other jobs. But in practice many of the poorer paid jobs have been done by women.

Ms Lee said it was a problem that had been "hiding in plain sight" for years and that while there was no suggestion that Tesco had intentionally been underpaying women, historical divisions between male and female roles had led to the pay differential.

"We believe an inherent bias has allowed store workers to be underpaid over many years," she said.

"In terms of equal worth to the company there really should be no argument that workers in stores, compared to those working in the depots, contribute at least equal value to the vast profits made by Tesco.

"The law has been there since 1984 - you can compare with a different job.

"That's 34 years to put your house in order; that's 34 years of having the advantage of paying unequally, 34 years of you making pay decisions and making financial decisions and 34 years hiding what is in open sight."

Significant bill?
Leigh Day said that up to 200,000 supermarket workers could be affected, the majority of them women.

Initial claims have been lodged with the conciliation service, ACAS - the first stage in what is likely to be a lengthy legal process through the employment tribunal system which could last several years.

If even a small proportion of the women are successful, the bill for Tesco would be significant.
Birmingham City Council is now liable for over £1bn pounds in payments after settling an equal pay claim from women employed as cleaners, cooks and carers.

Their pay was below men in comparable jobs such as bin collectors and road workers.

Leigh Day is also fighting similar actions against rival supermarket groups Asda and Sainsbury's on behalf of shop floor workers.

In 2016, an employment tribunal ruled that 9,500 women who work at Asda on check-outs or stacking shelves, could compare themselves to higher paid men who work at warehouses.

Asda is currently appealing the ruling.

Tesco said that all their staff could progress equally and were paid fairly, whatever their gender or background.

"We are unable to comment on a claim that we have not received," a spokeswoman said.

"Tesco has always been a place for people to get on in their career, regardless of their gender, background or education, and we work hard to make sure all our colleagues are paid fairly and equally for the jobs they do."

'Discrepancies'
Two workers for Tesco told the BBC they wanted fair treatment, arguing that their jobs in the stores were as demanding as warehouse jobs.

Pam Jenkins has been working for Tesco for 26 years.

"I think that we should be brought up to their [the men's] level," she told me.

"Obviously the jobs are slightly different but to put it bluntly they are of equal value.

"We deal with customers, they [the men] don't have to. We load, we take the stock and we load the stock, they take it off the lorry and we load it onto the shelves.

"Women have been fighting for equal rights and their voice to be heard for 100 years, we are not just doing it for us, there are many people out there.

"We are just trying to put things right and it's a shame we are still having to fight in this day and age."

Kim Element has been working for Tesco for 23 years.

"Although we think we have equal rights, there are times where there are discrepancies and you can't explain them," she said.

"And I think Tesco's are one of many companies that aren't addressing the fact that women seem to still be paid less."

Ms Lee said that Tesco was a good employer, signing up to a number of gender equality projects over a number of years.

But she said the company - along with many others - was still failing to reward people equally.

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What a load of absolute shite, man

So let's get this straight...

a) A woman who works on the shop floor is paid exactly the same as a man who works on the shop floor
b) A woman who works in the warehouse is paid exactly the same as a man who works in the warehouse
c) A woman who works on the shop floor is paid less than a man who works in the warehouse
d) A man who works on the shop floor is paid less than a woman who works in the warehouse

All of these are true, yet the only one that is being mentioned is 'c', which is, surprise surprise, the only one which gives the impression women are being discriminated against.

But they're not. This has absolutely fuck all to do with gender, they are two different jobs which are both open to both sexes. It's not Tesco's fault that the majority of women would prefer to do a job where they sit on their arse all day in a warm building passing bags of frozen chips and tins of beans through the scanner, rather than working in a cold warehouse doing hard manual labour lugging pallets on and off wagons, along with the hugely increased risk of injury.

If they were just complaining about the pay discrepancy between the two jobs then fair enough (although I still wouldn't agree the two jobs should be paid the same), but they're bringing gender in to it simply because they know this country is shit scared of being accused of being biased against anyone that isn't a straight white male.

"Although we think we have equal rights, there are times where there are discrepancies and you can't explain them," she said.

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Being a betting man, I'd happily have a decent wager that Miss/Mrs Element probably holds the antiquated opinion that a man should never hit a woman, a view that is highly sexist and has no place in today's modern 'gender equality' society. This would very much make her a hypocrite indeed.

She's right, though. There ARE times where there are explainable discrepancies in gender equality. For example, how about in the event of a disaster, the unwritten 'women and children first' rule. What about us men, we don't want to fucking die either?!! I'd be running away throwing women behind me.

Or when a teacher is caught having sexual relations with a pupil. When it's a male teacher doing the dirty, not only do they almost always receive a harsher sentence than their female counterparts do, but also the headlines in the media will be something along the lines of "PAEDOPHILE PERVERT TEACHER HAS SEX WITH CHILD", accompanied by a photo of them looking dishevelled and unshaven, usually after spending a sleepless night in a police cell.
Conversely, a woman teacher who commits exactly the same crime, will receive a slap on the wrist (suspended sentence) and the headline of "BLONDE BOMBSHELL TEACHER HAS YEAR-LONG AFFAIR WITH STUDENT", with a photo from her Facebook page of her dolled up the the nines looking like every schoolboy's fantasy.

And then there's the unbalance of parental rights - when two parents split up the mother is almost always the one who is given main custody, she usually has to be a heroin-addicted hooker to not be, and often the father has to spend years fighting in the courts just to see his kids.

And I read a rather disturbing report today (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/201...cared-hug-children-case-accused-sexual-abuse/), which I may come back to on this thread, which tells how guides for foster parents state that the male carers should not show physical affection for the children they are bringing up in case people think that they're paedo's, and that male carers should put the kids in the back seat of the car when picking them up because, you know, all men are potential child abusers and not a single woman is.

So yeah, she's got a point, like

"And I think Tesco's are one of many companies that aren't addressing the fact that women seem to still be paid less."

If Tesco do actually lose this court case, then perhaps they should do this. Tell all their workers, on the shop floor and in the warehouses, that they must share jobs. So the shop workers will work every other week in the warehouse, and the warehouse workers every other week on the shop floor. The shop workers surely won't complain about having to do this as, like they say, the jobs are just the same, aren't they?

Imagine Kim Element's face when she gets told to unload 30 pallets off a big fuck off lorry in the freezing cold driving rain

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